The present invention relates to testing data packet signal transceivers, and in particular, to testing a data link of a data packet signal transceiver.
Many of today's electronic devices use wireless signal technologies for both connectivity and communications purposes. Because wireless devices transmit and receive electromagnetic energy, and because two or more wireless devices have the potential of interfering with the operations of one another by virtue of their signal frequencies and power spectral densities, these devices and their wireless signal technologies must adhere to various wireless signal technology standard specifications.
When designing such wireless devices, engineers take extra care to ensure that such devices will meet or exceed each of their included wireless signal technology prescribed standard-based specifications. Furthermore, when these devices are later being manufactured in quantity, they are tested to ensure that manufacturing defects will not cause improper operation, including their adherence to the included wireless signal technology standard-based specifications.
For testing these devices following their manufacture and assembly, current wireless device test systems typically employ subsystems for providing test signals to each device under test (DUT) and analyzing signals received from each DUT. Some subsystems include at least a vector signal generator (VSG) for providing the source signals to be transmitted to the DUT, and a vector signal analyzer (VSA) for analyzing signals produced by the DUT. The production of test signals by the VSG and signal analysis performed by the VSA are generally programmable (e.g., through use of an internal programmable controller or an external programmable controller such as a personal computer) so as to allow each to be used for testing a variety of devices for adherence to a variety of wireless signal technology standards with differing frequency ranges, bandwidths and signal modulation characteristics.
Other subsystems can include a reference device that is similar to the current DUT and has been tested and proven to be in conformance with the performance and operation characteristics of interest for purposes of the tests to be performed upon the current DUT. This reference device is controlled and operated in a manner to exercise the current DUT to determine its conformance, or failure to conform, with the wireless signal technology standards for which it has been designed.
As part of the manufacturing of wireless communication devices, one significant component of production cost is costs associated with these manufacturing tests. Typically, there is a direct correlation between the cost of test and the sophistication of the test equipment required to perform the test. Thus, innovations that can preserve test accuracy while minimizing equipment costs (e.g., increasing costs due to increasing sophistication of necessary test equipment, or testers) are important and can provide significant costs savings, particularly in view of the large numbers of such devices being manufactured and tested.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have techniques for testing increasingly sophisticated DUTs with increasingly varied performance characteristics and requirements without also requiring increasingly sophisticated testers with similarly increasingly varied testing characteristics and requirements.